Love it but don't quite get it.

Lua only has 5 "data" types: nil, bool, number, string, and table. There is also "userdata" (defined in C)

Would this improve performance for functions that take in the non-table types? Or does it provide some mechanism for structured data besides tables?

I have a hard time believing there are many performance gains to be had for the few functions that take in only native types. I suppose compiling those could have major performance improvements in a few tight-loop use-cases?